Dozens of players are set to return to the felt for Day 2 of the €3,000 EPT Mystery Bounty at the 2023 PokerStars EPT presented by Monte-Carlo Casino®. 581 entries were made during Day 1 and there ended up being 167 players bagging up chips. Liu Chun Keat captured the chip lead and covers the entire field with his 368,500 stack. He is thus in a prime position to hunt Mystery Bounty tokens throughout the day.
Each player will be given a bounty chip at the start of the day, and those who knock someone out of the tournament will receive the said chip. At any moment throughout the remainder of the series, players can then redeem it at the bounty desk, where a large chest full of envelopes can be found. Those envelopes all contain a bounty with a random prize, ranging from low four-figure to high five-figure or even six-figure numbers.
Prominent chess player and live streamer Alexandra Botez is among those hoping to pull one of those top bounties today. However, with a stack of 63,500 she has some work ahead of her to increase the chances of that happening. The same can not be said for PokerStars Ambassador Sam Grafton, who is sitting on a comfortable 247,500 chips at the start of play and is looking to win his second Mystery Bounty Event of the series, having taken home the title in the €10,200 Mystery Bounty opening event already.
Top Ten Chip Counts at Start Day 2
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liu Chun Keat | Malaysia | 368,500 | 184 |
| 2 | Igor Yaroshevskyy | Ukraine | 347,500 | 174 |
| 3 | Gerard Carbo | Spain | 340,000 | 170 |
| 4 | Franck Makaci | France | 338,500 | 169 |
| 5 | Fabio Peluso | Italy | 318,500 | 159 |
| 6 | Stephen Kehoe | Ireland | 284,500 | 142 |
| 7 | Ramzi Karam | Lebanon | 256,500 | 128 |
| 8 | Recep Aydemir | Turkey | 254,000 | 127 |
| 9 | Sam Grafton | United Kingdom | 247,500 | 124 |
| 10 | Florian Duta | Romania | 243,000 | 122 |
Late registration is still open until the start of play at 12:30 p.m. local time today, and all final numbers will be calculated thereafter. €1,000 of each buy-in is reserved for the bounty prize pool, while €1,716 will go to the regular cash prize pool.
Some of the players who have already made use of the option to maximize late registration include Carl Shaw, who will fire his eighth bullet in this event, Conor Beresford, Julien Sitbon and Christopher Puetz. Jennifer Shahade will also join the fray, increasing the average chess Elo of the field even more. All of them will receive the starting stack of 30,000 chips, good for 15 big blinds at the start of play.
Play will resume at 12:30 p.m. local time, with the blinds on Level 13 at 1,000/2,000 with a 2,000 big blind ante. The levels will continue to be 40 minutes long throughout the tournament, with a break scheduled every three levels.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be here from start to finish, as always. Stay tuned for regular updates regarding hands, chip counts, and of course, big bounty action.